California’s Struggle to Save Higher Education Continues

In California’s $1.7 trillion economy the money is there to deal with the debt. Since the Republican minority has effectively blocked the option of putting to the voters extending the existing taxes we should begin gathering signatures for a proposition that raises taxes on the state’s richest corporations and individuals with the revenues reserved for education at all levels, from kindergartners to doctoral students.

The Republican minority’s obstructionism, even in a time of great economic turmoil, has brought with it an astonishing level of cynicism to our public discourse. It poisons our politics with paralysis, poisons our society with unmet needs and unnecessary suffering, and poisons our democracy because of the arrogance of minority rule. People who do not believe in government shouldn’t insist on being part of it.

Just take for example the kind of “leadership” a California state senator like Ted Gaines (R-Roseville) provides his constituents. He sends his own children to private school while stubbornly ensuring that the children who have the unfortunate fate of living in his district (and whose parents cannot afford private school) are warehoused in schools that are little more than hollowed out shells after years of heartless budget cuts Gaines supported. And now Gaines is a proud member of the Republican minority that refuses to allow Californians even the opportunity to vote on whether or not to extend a set of existing (regressive) taxes to deal with the budget.

California doesn’t need any more budget “deals” negotiated behind closed doors. The ongoing budget crisis affects all Californians and we should have a right to vote on sensible measures to address it. What’s truly amazing is that even after Governor Brown and the Democratic legislative majority met the Republicans far past “half way” with $13 billion in savage budget cuts that tear apart Democratic constituencies, neither the Republicans nor the press give any credit whatsoever to the Democrats for this huge sacrifice. The frame on the budget debate gives the Democrats absolutely zero credit for the cuts that hurt them politically with their base. The Republicans move the goal posts and the Democrats simply shrug and continue the game as if nothing has changed.

But the dysfunction does not stop at the state Capitol, it can also be found in the CSU Chancellor’s office and the Board of Trustees who seem content to oversee the diminution of the institution they are “entrusted” to protect so long as their six-figure salaries and perks continue as if nothing has changed. In recent years the CSU faculty has endured furloughs and waves of budget cuts. Academic departments have been under great pressure to make do with less and stuff more students into fewer courses. Meanwhile student fees have shot up over 200 percent in the past two years. These days either you earn a college degree or you will most likely spend the bulk of your productive life in some backwater job somewhere. Who represents the students and their families who are being held hostage?

The budget constraints have led the CSU administration to put into overdrive its business model for higher education, to treat education like a “business,” like a “product” that is “delivered” to a “customer.” The administrators say that “efficiency” will improve the system. Unlike the “University” of Phoenix, or Kaplan, or other for-profit diploma mills that have bestowed millions of dollars in profits on their CEOs and shareholders, the cash-strapped public colleges and universities are operating on shoestring budgets. The irony is that as CSU administrators seek to save money due to the drying up of funding they’re pushing the system in the direction of the for-profits by slashing course offerings and railroading more and more students into on-line courses that are virtually identical to Phoenix or Kaplan. So the end result is a situation where parents and students are paying more and more each year in fees and tuition and other expenses, driving up their debt ratios, and often working longer hours to finance their educations, while the administration stuffs them into ever-larger classes or into cookie-cutter, standardized Internet courses.

My colleagues and I refuse to believe that the majority of Californians agree with the Republican minority in the Legislature that today’s young people should be cast off like so much dead weight. The future of this state depends on the brainpower and skills of these young people. Tens of thousands of potential CSU students who are clamoring to enroll are being left out in the cold. Why are today’s young people less deserving of having access to a high quality, low-cost education than someone who came through the system twenty or thirty years ago?

On April 13th CSU students and the California Faculty Association will be demonstrating at CSUs across the state. We call upon everyone who values public higher education in California, (or has benefited from having access to it), to please join us in delivering the message to our elected “leaders”: We aren’t going to sit idly by and watch as this precious public resource that contributes so much to our state and to our local communities is torn apart in service of an extremist ideological agenda of a recalcitrant Republican minority.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the LA Progressive, its publisher, editor or any of its other contributors.

About Joseph Palermo

Joseph Palermo is Professor of History, California State University, Sacramento. Professor Palermo's most recent book is The Eighties (Pearson 2012). He has also written two other books: In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Columbia, 2001); and Robert F. Kennedy and the Death of American Idealism (Pearson, 2008). Before earning a Master's degree and Doctorate in History from Cornell University, Professor Palermo completed Bachelor's degrees in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Master's degree in History from San Jose State University. His expertise includes the 1980s; political history; presidential politics and war powers; social movements of the 20th century; the 1960s; and the history of American foreign policy. Professor Palermo has also written articles for anthologies on the life of Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J. in The Human Tradition in America Since 1945 (Scholarly Resources Press, 2003); and on the Watergate scandal in Watergate and the Resignation of Richard Nixon (CQ Press, 2004).

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